Business and Personal Goals for 2012

I’m not sure about you, but I love setting my goals for the coming year. Goal setting is our chance to determine our priorities and decide where we want to be in life 1 year, 2 years, 5, 25 years from now.

Of course there’s no reason we can’t do goal setting all year round (and in fact I try to do this monthly.) But the start of the new year provides a feeling of renewal, of change, and it’s riding that feeling of change that I now present to you my goals for 2012. For each goal, I include:

What the goal is

My plan of action for attaining the goal

The long term goal (2-5 year goal) that this goal connects with or supports

Personal Goals for 2012

Goal 1: Pick up a new language (probably either Taiwanese or Japanese) and be able to engage in basic conversation by the end of the year.

Plan of action: continue with Taiwanese classes at school.

Long-term goal: none (personal enjoyment.)

Goal 2: Finish Stewart calculus book

Plan of action: 17 chapters, complete 1 chapter every two weeks.

Long-term goal: I’d like to complete a BA and perhaps do grad school in physics, but first I need to get myself up to speed on all the relevant math! Motto for 2012: calculus is my friend!

Goal 3: Stay (reasonably) fit!

Plan of action: go to the gym at least twice per week.

Long-term goal: staying alive.

Website Design-Related Business Goals for 2012

Long-term goal: build Website On-Demand into a company with revenues and capacity to run itself indefinitely (e.g., perhaps even build it to the point where I could hire a management team!)

Goal 1: Maintain or grow Website On-Demand monthly income

Plan of action: do a new email campaign every quarter where every email campaign consists of weekly emails. The first quarter campaign should be the maritimes campaign.

Goal 2: Launch my maritimes campaign for Website on-Demand

Plan of action: this campaign has been a long time in coming. Needed actions include: write the content for the maritimes landing page, create the landing page, do an eblast once every two weeks with the second week devoted to conversion optimization.

Goal 3: Remove myself from development and support roles with Website On-Demand

Plan on action: hire a team of skilled, personable and reliable developers and support agents to handle development and support work

Passive Income-Related Business Goals for 2012

Long-term goal: Early retirement! Should that not happen in the next 2 to 5 years though, I’ll be happy with the freedom to live wherever I want and work on whatever I choose regardless of financial considerations (with my move to Taiwan this year, I’m fortunately most of the way there already!)

Goal 1: Have passive income sources make up 50% of my total revenue by December 31, 2012.

Plan of action: this goal depends upon successful completion of goals relating to: Study Chinese in Taiwan website, PTS, BRIM, niche website construction and any other passive income projects I undertake this year.

Goal 5: Create 1 niche site every month

Long Term Goals (aka Chris’s Roadmap to the Future)

Annual goals are even more powerful when they connect to your more meaningful long-term/life-long goals. For the sake of this section, I’m defining long-term goals as those that could be attained in the next 5-10 years.

This is, embarrassingly, only something I’ve started recently thinking about.

As I get older, I’m increasingly feeling the need not just to earn money but to make a contribution to the world that will outlive myself. As a gay man, it may or may not be in my future to have children. An intellectual contribution that improves the human condition or helps us better understand our place in the universe IS something I can and would like to work towards.

Anyways, to that end, here are my long term goals:

Financial independence either through immense wealth OR sufficient passive-income: freedom to invest my time where I see fit regardless of financial concerns

Complete a BA and maybe graduate work in physics: asides from being of personal interest, this to me is an opportunity to directly help us better understand our place in the university

Create businesses that directly improve people’s lives in a substantial way: generating wealth from improving people’s lives seems to me to be the best of both worlds to me